


Days Worth Forgetting

by howevernot



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Sex, Blood and Gore, Dialogue Heavy, Disability, Dissociation, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Flashbacks, Guilt, Hopeful Ending, Infidelity, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, Sexual Dysfunction, i would characterize the pacing as slow, repressed!Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22643680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot
Summary: He doesn't speak to his daughters on his way to bed, simply kisses their foreheads and slips back out. He knows he is like a ghost haunting their lives.When he reaches his own bedroom door, he has the intense fear that he will open the door to find Blake there in his bed, limp and bloody. He has the irrational urge to go back outside and find somewhere cool and damp to sleep.Or: Will has come back from the war but he is still finding his way back to himself.
Relationships: Joseph Blake & William Schofield, Joseph Blake/Original Female Character(s), Tom Blake/William Schofield, William Schofield/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 145





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I worked on this all day and I have the next 2? chapters ready for editing. I'm not sure when they'll be up but I'm hoping to get to it this week.  
> I shirked doing any and all homework to write this so I hope y'all like it!  
> This can be read as a continuation of Distant Rest.  
> Also I have no beta and I did my best!
> 
> There is definitely triggering content in this, so if you need a more detailed warning please refer to the end notes.
> 
> NOTE! This used to be called Twisted Remains but I hated that title. The title is now an adapted line from Wilfred Owens poem "Insensibility."

His daughters are out for the day and it’s Sunday, nothing much to do except sit about and wait for a letter from the Blakes. They’ve been talking about Will coming up for a visit and in the next letter he’s to receive times and dates of trains he could take. He’s eager to hear from them. 

It’s his wife who gives him something to do. Since the war they haven’t touched much, only rarely have they had sex, but today she clearly wants. She comes over to where he is sitting, and kisses him deeply. He lets her lead and lead him to the bedroom. She strips off her clothes and tells him where to touch. She’s bleeding today.

The blood normally isn’t a problem for him. When they were first together it was. He found the blood dirty and unnatural at first. But his wife had assured him repeatedly this was natural, that he wasn’t required to do anything about her desire, but she would appreciate if he did. He doesn’t like to have sex with her still when she’s bleeding, the slick sticky texture is profoundly unpleasant he finds, but he doesn’t mind the texture on his fingers and before the war he loved fingering his wife. He loved being close to her, feeling her gasp and sigh into his throat or against his shoulder. He loved watching her face as she came apart, he admired her shaking thighs and the tightening of her stomach. 

It helps now the he doesn’t need to be hard to finger her. 

This isn’t supposed to be a problem but then he feels the slick of blood against his fingers and the smell, iron and that deep hormonal smell that is so uniquely his wife. But the smell of iron and the slick warmth on his hands is making his heart pound with something other than desire. He tries to just breathe through the adrenalin and keep moving. He finds sometimes now when they’ve finished that he’s not been present at all. She’ll have come but he will hardly remember the last half hour. He tries to get to that place, where sort of floats above himself, barely feeling the slick on his fingers or his wife’s hip grinding down into his hands.

But he cannot. He catches sight of the blood on his fingers and panics, remembers Blake’s pale face, and his own hands covered in blood for hours afterwards.

He’s not sure how they stop but his wife is speaking to him and he can’t breathe. He feels familiar grinding panic; if he can just get Blake to the aid station, if they can just get moving.

By the time he’s come back to himself his wife has hastily wiped his hands with a wet cloth. He stays sitting at the edge of the bed for a long time looking at the blood crusted in his cuticles. 

His wife knows to leave him at times like this. He has lashed out at her more than once, unthinking and terrified, when he’s like this. She still tries to talk him down sometimes, though she’s never succeeded. 

When he wanders out of the bedroom, he finds her in the kitchen. Her eyes are red and her hair still in disarray from their earlier activities.

“Are you alright?” she asks. His eyes burn; he doesn’t know how to answer that.

“Yes,” he answers. His voice is hoarse.

“Will,” she says, and it’s a caution not to lie, or maybe a plea for the truth.

He feels helpless to explain to her.

“I’m sorry. I should have known that wasn’t a good idea. I wasn’t thinking,” she says after a few beats of silence. She’s scrubbing the counters, a futile effort, their daughters will come home soon and she will have to dirty them again with dinner preparations. 

“You couldn’t have known.” He tells her.

“I should have.” He’s not sure if that’s an accusation or not, they’ve fought about this before, the way he doesn’t talk to her and the way they trip into things like this. 

The atmosphere is charged and Will still feels raw from his earlier breakdown. 

“I’m going out,” he tells her.

Her face twists with displeasure. He wishes he could sooth her but he simply cannot be in the house at the moment. 

He walks all evening until it is dark, and keeps walking. He’s not the only one. In the early evening young couples stroll by enjoying the warm evening. As it darkens, he sees people rushing off to pubs or to each other’s doors for drinks and conversation. There are other men walking, wandering, some he knows are veterans, some he can only guess are. They are also too unsettled to be at home he guesses, but like him have nowhere to go but back to their wives.

By the time he gets back his dinner is long cold, though still on the table. He feels nausea just looking at the full plate, but he eats all the same and tries to remind himself to be grateful. 

His daughters are still up reading together in their room, giggling over passages from a magazine they’re reading. He doesn’t ask them how their day went or ask what they are reading. He simply kisses their foreheads and wishes them goodnight. He knows at times he is like a ghost haunting all their lives.

When he reaches his own bedroom door, he has the intense fear that he will open the door to find Blake there in his bed, limp and bloody. He has the irrational urge to go back outside and find somewhere cool and damp to sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time. Their town is surrounded by countryside, he could find a field to sleep in, a ditch nearby to take cover in if needed.

He forces himself to open the door. His wife is there instead of a bloodied Blake. She too is reading. He comes in and begins to change into pajamas, realizing only then that he never washed the blood from his fingers. He feels a deep sense of shame and hurries to cover himself again in pajamas before going to wash his hands carefully is scorching water.

When he gets back, his wife watches him carefully. He notices that she’s actually reading a letter, not a book. 

“A letter from your mum?” he asks absently. She and his mother in law write each other at least once a week, if not more.

She doesn’t immediately answer.

“Sarah?” he asks, concerned at her silence, still feeling keenly that he is doing something wrong.

“It’s from Joseph Blake.” she tells him in a neutral tone.

He snaps the letter up from her hand, scouring the page. 

Since the war, he and Joe have been writing back and forth. He had started writing him after they were both hospitalized together. After Will’s arrival at the second devons someone had quickly realized that he had head trauma and an infection in his hand and later in the hospital they’d found he had cracked some ribs. He spent weeks in a hospital in France. Joe had come in two weeks later, skeletal and missing a leg from the knee.

He’d told Will that Tom had made it. He was in a different hospital some miles from them, since he couldn’t be moved as easily as the two of them. Will had felt immensely relieved to hear the man had lived. When he had left Tom, he’d had a knife still sticking out of his abdomen and little chance of survival. He had told Will to go, sweating profusely and shaking with blood loss and pain. He had looked at Will and commanded him to leave, and Will had.

He and Tom never wrote each other, but he read the letters Joe received from him voraciously, desperate to know more. In the hospital miles from them Tom had already almost died from infection. Doctors could cut off a leg or a hand that was too badly infected but an infected abdominal wound was another matter. Will had raged at him. He told Joe how stupid the man was, that he had to help the fucking Hun and get stabbed in the gut. Couldn’t he have just listened to Will. The rage was easier than being scared, which he was, terribly so.

But Tom had survived, and Will had been shipped home, and some months later so had Joe. From then on Joe wrote him regularly, though he made little mention of Tom, and Will rarely asked.

Tom had been released last and he was home now too. 

He’s still not convinced that Tom is alive, yet there at the bottom of this letter with its babble and times and dates is Tom’s signature next to his brother’s. 

“Are you going to meet them?” Sarah asks him and her words make Will aware of how long he has been standing here, staring at the letter in silence. She doesn’t know about the Blake brothers. He’s never told her.

He nods and sits on the edge of the bed reading over the letter again.

“You know them from the war.” 

“Yes,” Will answers, still distracted.

“You say his name in your sleep,” she tells him.

“I’m sorry, what?” he answers, attention now firmly on his wife.

“You say his name in your sleep,” she repeats, looking at him intently.

“I’m sorry,” he answers, he knows he’s not pleasant to sleep in the same bed with.

“Why?” she asks. Will respects his wife immensely, but her unwillingness to flinch away from conversations like this has become increasingly difficult. Before the war he loved how she would pull him out his self-imposed silences by asking him difficult questions. Now, after the war, it’s increasingly difficult to talk to her, to find a new equilibrium within their relationship. Especially because she refuses to allow him his silence.

He shrugs helplessly instead of answering. She has refused to allow his apologies for his disturbed sleep in the last. It’s not worth apologizing again.

“Do you think it will help you?” she asks.

He nods, though he’s not sure if it will.

She kisses his cheek instead of pressing further, and he is grateful. His chest is alive with pain. He knows this is difficult for her. He knows that before the war they would have sat and talked this over and he would have told her about his friends and his plans. He and Sarah had been dear friends as children and when they married, they only became closer. Now, he flinches away from her when she touches him and holds his secrets in silence. 

That night he dreams of Blake, bleeding on the ground, and Will watches himself slide his fingers into Blakes wound, it is warm and wet and pulsing and Blake shudders and cries as he does it. Will knows he is hurting the other man but he has control of his actions. He keeps digging into Blake; in his dream he wants to hurt him. It’s a parody of the failed sex with his wife earlier. 

Blakes face transforms, and suddenly his look is one of pleasure rather than pain, the same expression he wore when he came over Will’s hand in that French inn from their shared leave. 

Will wakes sweating. He scrambles to the bathroom to vomit. Sarah comes in moments later and rests a hand on his shoulder. He shakes her away.

“Don’t touch me,” he pleads.

She holds her hands up. In the past she has tried to comfort him, or at least elected to sit with him in silence. But now she just leaves. He actually desperately wants her to stay but he cannot bring himself to speak.

~~~~~~

He tells Sarah he’s going to stay with the Blakes for four days. She asks if he doesn’t want to stay longer. He says he doesn’t want to leave them for too long. She smiles and reminds him they made it four years without him. He tells her that if he wants to stay longer, he’ll write her. His father-in-law gave him the same offer.

Their daughters feel the tension between them. Anna, his youngest daughter, asks about him it one night. 

“Dad?” 

“Yes, Anna?” he responds. 

“Are you and mom alright?” she asks. She’s not looking at him as she asks. He looks at her. She’s blond like him and he feels like her doesn’t know her most days, just like he doesn’t know his wife.

“Yes, we are sweetheart. Why do you ask?” the lie comes easy.

“You haven’t kissed her when you leave for work all week,” Anna tells him, finally looking up at him.  
“Come here,” he tells her.

She gets up from her chair and he hugs her. He feels like crying holding her small frame to him. He remembers the baby in the basement in Ecoust, who’s probably dead. He remembers the kids who would come to the front, younger than Blake though older than Anna, and die in a week. 

He kisses her forehead and rubs her arm. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Is it the war?” she asks, because she is too much like her mother and knows how to watch and understand what’s actually happening. 

He nods; pain lances across his forehead as he looks at her. He loves her and Emma desperately.

Her face twists like it would when she fell as a toddler. He hopes to god she won’t cry; he has nothing to offer as comfort. She doesn’t cry, but nods and kisses his cheek. 

His headache blooms as he continues to look at her. By the time he goes back to his book his head is pounding so hard he can no longer focus on the words.

He goes to bed. He’s leaving the next day to visit the Blake brothers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: sex with a woman on her period happens, also there's a graphic nightmare that involves fingers being put into stab wounds


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No major triggers for this chapter. Just a lot of tension and so many OCs.  
> For those of you who have been paying attention, I just handed in my thesis today! It was terrifying!

The train ride is unbearably slow. The cabins are hazy with cigarette smoke and no one bothers speaking to each other. Will tries to read but finds he cannot. He can’t convince himself that he’s safe enough to sleep on the train, which is absurd since he used to be able to sleep just about anywhere during the war. Now he struggles to sleep in a bed, which he so desperately longed for on the front, and he can’t sleep in public even though during the war he slept in the grass surrounded by his comrades.

He watches the countryside. He watches the faces of his fellow travelers. He wonders how many of the men on the train are veterans, he wonders how many of the women lost someone. 

He gets off at the station Joe told him to but it’s not Joe waiting for him. Instead, it’s Tom Blake. Will feels gutted seeing him again, standing there at the station, with some scruff on his face and cane in his hand. 

“Christ,” he breathes as he rushes over.

“Blake,” he calls. Now that he’s laid eyes on him, he has no idea why he kept himself away.

Blake’s face lights up. Will wants to rushes up and hug him, but he holds himself back. Blake pulls him in anyway and Will lets himself crush the other man to him. Blake makes a noise against him, something like pain and Will draws back just as quickly as he rushed forward, afraid that he has hurt him.

“Get back here,” Blake huffs and pulls him back into the hug. 

They hug for a long moment.

“Where’s Joe?” he asks when they break apart.

“Oh, he wasn’t up to the walk here and back, so I came instead,”

After that, Will doesn’t know what else to say; he stares at Blake.

Blake smiles softly up at him. 

“Are you ok? How was the trip?” Blake asks him and Will wants to crawl out of his fucking skin with how mundane those questions are.

“I’m sorry I never wrote,” he says instead of answering. 

Blake looks taken aback and Will is comforted to see that he still wears his emotions on his sleeve. Will has long admired his openness.

“I thought you were angry with me. I was honestly surprised that you agreed to see us,” Tom admits. 

“No, no I wasn’t angry. I-” he hesitates, he wants to go on he finds, but he also can’t bear to talk about it in this public setting, with families and their children all about. Blake is looking at him expectantly.

Will clears his throat and quickly looks away. Tom shuffles. “Let’s head over, eh?”

They start walking over to Joe’s, who is married and was before the war and has a son, who everyone calls Artie. For an unsettling moment, Will really doesn’t understand what he’s doing here. He doesn’t know these people, hell he barely knows Tom, so what the fuck is he doing here. 

But as they walk Tom starts telling him stories and Will can’t help but smile at him and feel an ease he hasn’t felt in months. Tom should not do this to him. They only knew each other for a few months during the war and everything else that reminds him of the war makes him tense and angry or just scared. But here he is smiling at Tom ten minutes after reuniting. 

When they reach Joe’s house, his wife Betty answers the door and Tom introduces them and further in the house that already smells like dinner is Joe, who heaves himself up from a chair, also with a cane, and limps over to shake his hand and then Artie comes in and Will is told that they hope he doesn’t mind but Mrs. Blake, their mother, is coming too, since she wants to thank the man who saved her son in person and Will pushes down the feeling of being overwhelmed as he sits in an armchair across from Joe. The adults all listen as Tom and Artie talk animatedly for some time. Artie is apparently learning how to ride horses and hates school. Tom offers to help with his arithmetic, which he is evidently quite good at. Joe asks him banal questions about his trip, his wife, his daughters, his recovery since France. 

Artie and Tom, Will notes, seem to have the same gift for the gab. Will wonders if Tom was like that as a child. 

Will watches as the brothers do a strange dance together. When Joe gets up to get them drinks, Tom starts to stand with him, only for Joe to stare him down. Joe clearly struggles to carry the tray without his cane. His pace is slow and unsteady but he does eventually bring them all drinks. Tom watches him like a hawk the whole time. 

“Why the cane?” Will eventually asks, because he can and he suspects Tom might actually answer him.  
Tom, bizarrely, looks sheepish, “I still get pain sometimes, and I was in treatment for months so I still get winded too sometimes, lost a lot of muscle.”

Now that he mentions it, the man is more slight than last time he saw him, bleeding out in a field in France. 

“I’m sorry,” Will tells him, feeling a flash of guilt.

“Stop apologizing. You did the best you could,” Tom tells him and Will wants to argue but he can’t bring himself to, especially not with a child in the room.

The conversation moves on. Joe talks about his efforts to find a job, which is proving difficult with only one leg. His wife is pregnant again, although she’s very early along. Will updates them about his own family, though he glosses the tension as much as he can. He can’t bring his own floundering relationship into this space. 

Then, Mrs. Blake shows up. Tom smiles brightly at her and she fusses over Joe until he snaps at her. She hugs Will profusely and thanks him again and again. Will has difficulty accepting her affections. He finds her gratitude painful and her effusiveness unwarranted. He threw his medals in a lake near his house when he got home; he doesn’t want any praise for being the last man standing. 

“Mrs. Blake, please, don’t give me more credit than I deserve,” he finally says, desperate for her to leave him alone. 

“Ma,” Joe calls to her, “leave the man alone,” his look is significant and Mrs. Blake pats him on the face one last time, before going over to talk to Artie.

When dinner is served, Will lets the conversation just flows around him as he watches the Blakes. Mrs. Blake delights in her grandchild who chatters endlessly. Tom cracks jokes when Will or Joe get too sullen, but he lets them be quiet too. Betty is sweet and smart as a whip and deeply religious. She asks him delicate questions about his family and his parents and only provides gentle sympathy when he tells her his parents are dead. He talks a bit about his sisters with her too. She apparently has three, one of whom served as a volunteer nurse. The conversation is manageable. He likes talking about his sisters and feels no pressure to hide anything about them, the way he feels it necessary to hide his relationship with his wife.

At desert, discussions of where he should stay come up. He apparently has options. 

“So, here it is. You could stay here with me and Betty in the guest room, you could stay with Tom in his flat or with my mother at the farm,” is what Joe lays out for him.

He considers. He doesn’t know Mrs. Blake well and she apparently lives a ways out of town, so he would rely on her to get about. If he stays with Joe, he will not be subject to the same emotional weight as staying with Tom but Tom also has no children or wife, and he’s been desperate to get the man alone for a conversation since he saw Tom on the platform. If the conversation is a disaster, he can always stay the next night with Joe. 

“It alright if I stay with you, Tom?” he asks.

“Course it is,” Tom responds with a smile. 

After that, the house becomes increasingly chaotic as Mrs. Blake, Betty, and Tom all begin to clean up and Artie gets a rush of energy that has him bouncing excitedly around the room. Will helps to clear the table but the kitchen is small and cramped, so he leaves promptly. Joe limps into the kitchen and there’s a murmured conversation between him and Tom in the doorway. His Will watches them, admires the line of Tom’s neck and his familiar jawline. He looks away quickly when Tom looks up at him. 

Tom comes over and says to Will in a low tone “Let’s get out of here.”

Will tries to protests but then Tom is calling, “Everybody, we’re heading out!”

Betty comes to hug him which he returns stiffly, and shakes Joe’s hand. Mrs. Blake kisses Tom’s cheek and they both take a moment to say goodbye to Artie, Tom by ruffling his hair and Will by waving. Mrs. Blake calls out after them that they’re invited to lunch at hers tomorrow. The two of them walk back to Tom’s flat. On the way, Tom tells him about the horses his mother used to own.

“She had this one called Gracie and she was worst horse I ever met.”

Will makes an incredulous noise. He doesn’t know a whole lot about horses but he’d seen his fair share of unruly and frightened horses at the front. The noise and the stress and mud got to the horses just as much as it got to the men. Even so, he can’t imagine a farm horse that could earn Tom’s ire.

“No really, she was terrible. We got her friend a friend for cheep and then we couldn’t sell her because no one wanted her. Mum was so angry when she found out we’d been sold a shit horse. Gracie would puff up her chest and hold her breath when you tried to saddle her. Then you’d get on and slip off her because the fucking girth wasn’t tight enough. I ripped open my forehead the first time I ever rode her, nearly broke a leg. We couldn’t hook her up to a cart or anything either. Mum didn’t believe me when I told her. She thought I’d walked into a branch or fell because I made a mistake saddling her. She only believed me after Joe tried to ride her and she saw him fall.”

Will finds himself smiling unbidden at the story of the unruly horse.

“What did you do with her?” he asks.

“We kept her. Couldn’t sell her, couldn’t train her. We used her as a broodmare eventually, once she’d settled down a bit. The rest of time we just let her live. She liked other horses, just not people, so it wasn’t much trouble to keep her around. She did try to bite me a couple times. I’d come to clean out her stall and she’d try to get me when I let her out. We hooked up her door eventually so we could let her out without being near. She cooled off after she figured out we wouldn’t hurt her.”

“Why not put her down?” Will asks. “A horse like that has got to be more expensive than she’s worth.”

Tom shrugs. “Mum wouldn’t let us. Besides she and Shoes were so in love we couldn’t bear to get rid of her.”

“You had a horse named Shoes?” Will asks.

Tom grins at him. “Yeah, I named her.” 

The conversation goes on in this vein until they near the flat, when Will finds he can’t hold his silence any longer.

“I wasn’t angry with you,” Will says. 

Tom meets his eye briefly but doesn’t answer.

“I should have written,” he tells Tom, because its true; he regrets not writing.

“I would have liked that,” Tom says simply and Will squashes the urge to apologize more. 

He doesn’t elaborate further until they’re inside Tom’s flat. By the time they get there, Will is tired and really only wants to sleep but he sits with Tom at his table instead.

“I was scared,” he tells Tom simply. Its easy information to give away; he’s been practicing the words all night. 

Tom looks up at him with furrowed brows.

“I was so fucking relieved when I heard you were alive, Tom,” he admits, “I wanted to go to that hospital and,” he hesitates, “I wanted to go home with you,” he hopes Tom understands. He was supposed to want to go home to his family, but instead he wanted to go home with Tom. 

“Doesn’t explain why you couldn’t write.” Tom answers and he’s not looking Will in the eye.

Will blows out a breath. 

In the silence that follows, Will can see Tom getting increasingly tense.

“I kept waiting, you know. Joe kept writing me, telling me about you and I kept waiting for you to write me, or at least tell Joe to write something for you. Will, you even wrote my mother. I was in the hospital. I almost-” he doesn’t finish the thought but Will can hear the words reverberate in his head. “You wrote my mother,” Tom repeats. Tom almost died and Will didn’t have the decency to write him.

“I’m sorry,” Will says, at a loss of what else to say. 

“Did we have something?” Tom asks. Trust Tom to get to the point when Will can’t even imagine what the point is.

His face must do something in response to the question because Tom begins to stand. Will grabs his wrist. Tom’s face is crumpled and there’s color high on his cheeks.

“Tom, I’m not supposed to want you,” he finally admits. 

Tom sits back heavily. His face is open and vulnerable, his lips parted, a slight crease between his brows.

“I’m married, I have two children,” he goes on.

“You want me?” Tom asks sounding a moment away from breaking. 

Will feels a horrible sense of déjà vu. This is a parody of a conversation he had with Sarah earlier in the week where she had accused him of not wanting her anymore. He hadn’t known how to explain to her that he wanted to want her.

He closes his eyes. He can’t deny Tom the truth here, but he knows the admission is something he cannot take back. Once he says yes, he won’t be able to deny, even to himself, that he wants Tom.

He nods, “I do.”

There’s a long pause where Tom watches him. He holds Tom’s gaze.

“I do too. Since before that leave we had,” the mention of it sends a jolt through him. He feels something swelling through him that he can’t identify. A clawing sense of dread perhaps, or terror, or shame.

“Fuck!” he stands, unable to stay still another moment. 

Tom leans back from him but doesn’t look shocked or upset, like his wife and daughters do when he loses his composure. He still looks so open and vulnerable and he’s looking up at Will with such attention it’s painful.

Will is unsure what to do with himself. At this point at home, he would leave for the evening and come back when everyone was already asleep. But he’s here with Tom, and Tom is alive and he doesn’t want to waste it. He’s sure that if he leaves, something will break. He’s not sure if it will be him or Tom.

Tom grabs a wrist, tugs him close and then drops his forehead against Will’s hip. The touch is warm and shocking. After a moment, Will places a hand onto Tom’s crown and strokes the curls there. Tom lets out a shuddering breath against him.

Will stands like that for a long moment. He’s at a loss of what to do or say. There are no orders, conventions telling him where to go. He is stuck.

“Do you want to stay with mum? Or Joe?” Tom is looking up at him now, still holding his wrist.

“No,” he doesn’t, he wants to stay. 

“Ok, ok,” there’s a pause where Tom gestured back to the chair, asking Will to sit.

“Can we go outside?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure, we’ve got a courtyard in the back. C’mon,” Tom heaves himself up, wincing, and Will feels a stab of pain in his chest. 

Outside Tom pulls out cigarettes, offers one to Will. He takes it, grateful for something to do.

They stand in uncharacteristic silence. Will is reminded of standing outside that inn, smoking in the early evening, warm from wine and the night’s flirtation. It’s a cool evening now but even so he feels little of the warmth he felt back then. He’s just exhausted.

Tom presses closer to him until they’re shoulder to shoulder. The contact helps ease some of the tension.

“I can’t change what you want,” Tom tells him eventually. Its dangerous to talk about this in the open and Will appreciates his employment of the broadest terms possible.

“I don’t know what I want,” Will says.

Tom doesn’t call him on the lie. 

After Tom has smoked his cigarette, he heads back inside. Will stays out for a few more minutes to smoke another cigarette. He’s enjoying the breeze and watching a woman collect her laundry from the line when she walks towards him. He moves aside to let her pass into the building but she stops in front of him.

“You one of Tom’s friends?” she asks. Her tone is friendly, without a hint of accusation.

“Yes, ma’am,”

“I’m glad someone’s finally visiting him. It’s been hard on him since he came home. He’s been so quiet,” she tells him.

“I’m Jessie, I used to go to school with Joe,” she offers when he doesn’t immediately respond.

“William,” he offers, grinding out his cigarette on the ground and shaking her hand.

“You were in France together?” she asks bluntly.

“Yes, ma’am, we were,” he nods.

She sticks around a bit to chat, curious about Tom’s new friend. She asks him about his life, his service. He gives her as little information as possible. She tells it’s a shame what happened to Joe, he bites back a reply reminding her that at least Joe is alive. She tells him how upset his mother was when they were both injured. She mentions briefly the heroic rescue of both brothers by an unknown comrade and with a jolt he realizes its him she’s speaking of. It takes him another few minutes to get free from the conversation he accidentally entered.

When he gets upstairs Tom is sitting at his small desk writing. He smiles at Will when he enters and Will’s heart clenches at the warmth in that look.

“I ran into Jessie downstairs,” he tells Tom.

“Did she drop any hints about marriage?” Tom asks.

“No. Should she have?” Will is confused. He takes a seat at the table.

Tom snorts. “No. She’s determined to get married as fast as possible. Keeps throwing herself at everyone young and eligible. I think she’s jealous of all the girls in town who spent all that time pining after their sweethearts, only to get married as soon as they got back,” Tom informs Will. And that’s a strange thought. Will never even bothered to wonder if Will had a sweetheart.

“What about all the dead sweethearts?” Will asks. 

“All the more reasons to snap up anyone left,” Tom responds, putting down his pen and getting up. Will winces at the crass statement. Tom sounds bitter. He has to wonder if there’s story there. 

“C’mon then, I know you’re tired. I’ll show you the bedroom,” 

The bedroom is the most personal room so far in the flat. There’s a little bookcase, with titles Will is too tired to investigate, but there are also bird’s nests and river polished stones on the shelves too. There’s a family photo too, a new one, not the bloodstained one Tom had clutched as he lost consciousness. There’s also a framed cross stitch on the wall, with some saccharine phrase stitched on it.

Will feels gawky and out of place in the room. He knew when he agreed to stay here that he was signing up to sleep in the same bed as Tom, the man certainly didn’t have enough money for a guest room, but now that he’s confronted with being in Tom’s room doubt begins to needle him.

Will sets his bag down and pulls out some pajamas. Tom shows him the bathroom, down the hall, shared with several people in the building. He then excuses himself to finish writing.

After Will is settled but before he’s asleep Tom wanders in. He changes into sleep clothes and the exposed skin is as enticing as it is reassuring. He can see clearly now how much skinnier the man really is. He sees the scar on Tom’s belly. It’s livid red but smaller than Will expected. He knew the blade was small but with the amount he’d bled Will had expected it to be bigger.

When he climbs in, Will whispers to him, “I couldn’t believe you were alive. I wasn’t sure, almost didn’t believe the letters.”

Tom’s lips twist. God Will should not have looked at his lips. He remembers still what kissing those lips felt like. 

“I’m still here,” Tom says plainly. “They got me to the aid post in time. Keeping the knife in saved my life they said.”

He had looked dead. Will had told him he was dying. His hands had been caked with blood. He had touched the baby in the basement coated in a dead man’s blood, he thought.

Will reaches over to clasp Tom’s hand, suddenly desperate for more contact. He feels at sea; needs Tom’s hand to anchor him. He needs to reassure himself that this time, Tom is alive, not dead, not dying, but beautifully alive. His hand is warm, dry, and calloused from work.

He’s getting choked up. He’s kept this image of Tom as a dead boy in field. Though why he’s not sure, maybe so he could move on, go home and restart his life as Will, the father and husband. It’s not worked clearly. 

Tom rubs a thumb against his hand until he calms again.

“Tom, I know I have no excuse for not writing; it was a rubbish thing to do. I’m sorry,” he apologizes. 

“Better fucking write me from now on,” he commands. His tone is deceptively easy, but Will can hear the hurt behind it. He just keeps getting Tom hurt, doesn’t he? Will resolves to protect Tom better.

Before they slip off into sleep, Will admits “I have nightmares. I might wake you,”

Tom nods, “I have them too. I don’t know if I’ll wake you, but I wake myself most nights.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also RIP Gracie, an actual horse that I knew. She was the fucking worst. Ily Gracie.
> 
> Thank you everyone for the overwhelmingly positive response to the first chapter! I really appreciate it!
> 
> Comments and kudos give me life!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More warnings in the end notes.

He’s lying in bed with his wife in the morning light, the kind of bright that promises to give him a headache if he stays out too long. He presses into her body, takes pleasure in feeling naked skin against his own. 

Out of the corner of his eye he notices a patch of rough skin along her shoulder. She shifts, and the mark becomes clear. It’s grey and bubbled, flesh ragged and torn, leaking black fluid. It’s shiny and slick like gangrene, and Will feels a dull horror when he realizes he can look into the wound at the flesh underneath. Sarah begins to moan and Will slowly realizes he needs to help her. With a wound like that she could easily die of infection, she probably will die of infection. He needs to render aid, figure out where the closest aid station is. He’s so far away from the front, he can’t even begin to think of where to bring her. The moaning picks up pace. He needs to – He doesn’t know what he – 

He wakes with his heart racing. He lays catching his breath, marveling at his own illogical dream in the dark of Tom’s room. It takes a moment to realize that the moaning has continued and is not just part of a waking nightmare. In fact, the sound picks up to become short quiet wails, coming from the body beside him. Tom.

He’s tucked into Tom much the way he was tucked into Sarah in his dream, forehead against Tom’s back, his own hands tucked against his chest. He wonders briefly if he should let Tom wake on his own, but the wailing wrenches at him. He doesn’t want to imagine what the other man is dreaming about. 

Will shakes him gently. Tom doesn’t react. Will shakes him again, calling his name quietly.

Tom wake with his chest heaving and curls in on himself, as if protecting his abdomen from shrapnel. Will’s eyes burn. He rubs Tom’s back. He’s not sure if the physical comfort is welcome but Will needs desperately to touch Tom, to reassure himself that he’s alright, almost more than he wants to reassure Tom.

Tom groans again and rolls onto his back. 

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually, after his breathing is under control.

“S’alright. Was having my own nightmare when you woke me,” he murmurs back.

“Christ,” Tom mutters before crowding into Will’s chest, tucking his head under Will’s chin. The contact sends a shiver through Will. Tom is so warm and the feeling of his body sends Will’s skin crawling with fear and pleasure. 

Will is frozen. He’s so surprised by the touch that he just lets Tom nestle against him without comment. 

“You going to hold me Sco, or do I have to do it myself?” and the sass surprises a snort of laughter out of Will. He wraps an arm around Tom’s back, ignoring the increasing prickle of anxiety.

They’ve never been allowed to liberty of affection in the night before for fear of attracting suspicion. Sure, they’d slept side by side, sometimes sharing the same mattress in a tiny dugout, often sleeping sitting up, propped against each other in the trenches. But everyone had slept like that. They had always been packed together like sardines, sharing body space as the situation required. It was a sweet kind of torture then, to be pressed so close to Tom but pretend the touch didn’t matter. Now its torture to know the touch does matter, even if some part of him wants desperately for this to mean nothing. 

Will rubs his hand over Tom’s back again, over his shoulder, relieved to find it whole and unblemished under the fabric of his shirt. He has the urge to touch Tom’s scar, to make sure he’s whole there too. 

“God, fuck,” Tom says into Will’s chest. His voice is low and rough. His voice brings Will back to consciousness.

“You alright, Tom?” Will asks. He’s groggy and little confused, wonders if he’s missed something. It’s only then he notices how tense his back is tense against Will’s hand.

“Pain,” he grits out. He doesn’t offer more and Will isn’t sure he wants to ask.

“Do you need to take anything?”

Tom shakes his head, still speaking into his chest, “Morphine. Don’t like taking it unless it’s really bad.”

“What can I do?” he asks. He wishes keenly that he had been there for Tom’s recovery. During his own recovery he had made himself think of his family. He had forcefully evicted Tom from his mind, focusing on getting back to Sarah. But now, being here, seeing the continued aftermath of Tom’s injury, he wants nothing more than to go back and – and what? Visit Tom perhaps, mop his forehead while he was dying of infection, encourage him when he was just starting to walk again.

Tom pushes against Will gently, “I need to lay on my back for a bit.”

Will hesitates as they arrange themselves. There is no way for them to lay without touching, and now that they’ve been so intimately pressed together Will is loath to deny Tom the contact. Tom tugs at his arm, “C’mere,” he mumbles, already drifting off clearly.

Will shuffles over to lay a head on Tom’s shoulder. Tom lays an arm on his waist and Will feels suddenly that this is a strange parody of him and his wife. Sarah usually tucks herself close against his shoulder as he lays on his back with a leg thrown over his own and Will turns his head away to keep her long hair out of his face. Now, Tom tucks his nose against the top of Will’s head and Will does not throw a leg over him.

~~~~~~

Will wakes several hours later in light to find that Tom has shifted. He’s now tucked against Tom, facing away. One of Will’s arms is numb, their legs are tangled, and he’s hard against Tom’s back.

Ignoring his own erection, he presses his face into Tom’s hair and breathes him in. This is not the first time he’s woken up with his own hardness pressed to Tom’s back, or Tom’s pressed to his. He’s woken up with men from his company who he barely knew having a wank in the tent beside him and simply rolled over to give them some privacy. There’s little need for shame when you all bathe together, eat together, and die together. Sometimes he misses it, the easy camaraderie. 

He breathes Tom’s scent in. It’s so different from the way he smelled during the war, sweat, unwashed body, mud, and spent gunpowder. Here he smells like soap and crushed grass.

A few moments later, Tom’s breathing changes and he mumbles something incoherent. Will steels himself to deal with Tom’s obstinate incoherence in the morning. He was never a soldier who could wake and immediately spring to action.

“Will?” he asks looking blearily at him.

“Yeah,” he breathes, loosening his grip on the other man.

Tom doesn’t answer, just smiles blearily up at him. Will smiles back at him. He leans forward to kiss Tom’s forehead, because he can, because no one is watching and he wants to.

They don’t talk much. Tom slips in and out of consciousness for another hour. Will heads to the bathroom and back into bed with Tom after selecting a book from Tom’s shelves. He reads for a bit. Tom wakes properly and wanders off to the bathroom, then the kitchen for tea and breakfast. When Tom changes, Will watches carefully. He needs to see the scar to reassure himself that Tom isn’t secretly still rotting away under his clothing. The wound is still livid pink and in the morning light he can see the thin pale line of a surgery scar alongside the scar he saw last night.

Over breakfast and tea, Tom asks “Sco, what are you doing here? I mean, I get that you wanted to visit and Joe invited you and all that. But-” he shrugs helplessly.

Will thinks if he were Blake, he’d tell a story around now. That he’d have a way to explain himself that was entertaining, engaging, elucidating. He doesn’t have a story.

“I walked into my bedroom, the other week and I thought it would be you, bleeding out in my bed,” he says instead. He doesn’t know if that explains anything but Tom’s face softens.

“I thought it would be easy, once it was all done. Just go home, be a father again, be a husband again. I can’t stop fucking thinking about it though, Tom.” In some of his more shameful hours he longs to go back. He doesn’t miss the bodies, the flies, the smell, the death, the shells, or the terror. But he misses the people. He misses when everyone around him also understand how fucking awful everything was. Sure, there was tension and they fought amongst themselves. He had seen more than one commanding officer come to blows with a subordinate. Sometimes fights just broken out, for no good reason. The morning of his and Blake’s fateful mission, he had feared that Blake was about to come to blows after he’d knocked over that Sergeant. But they also understood, everyone knew how shit their lives were. 

And there were times when the kind of tenderness he longed for from his family could be found amongst the men. They had danced together, on rare occasions when there was music, cooked for each other. Before the Somme a friend named Lee had nursed Will through a bout of flu that had been going around. He’d been lost in no-man’s land no more than two weeks after Will had recovered.

“I don’t know how to be home anymore.” 

“So, what, you came here to relive the war? To get away from your family?” Blake asks. His tone is hard, harder than Will has heard before. He doesn’t know what’s engendered this change in Tom, but he knows he deserves all his hardness, no matter how it hurts.

“I have no desire to go back to that pit. I came because I missed you, and Joe. I couldn’t-” he runs out of words.

Tom looks at him, for a long hard moment. Will resolves to hold Tom’s gaze, even has he feels a prickle go down his back.

“Could have just fucking wrote,” Tom mutters, eventually. Will isn’t sure how to respond but he feels something bubbling up, indignation perhaps. Or a need to protect himself from Tom’s ire. Tom continues before he can respond.

“I missed you too.” Will hates that the admission seems to cost him nothing. 

“You remember Rosenthal?” Tom asks. Will shakes his head. He’s not sure which Wilson Tom means.  
“The sniper,” Tom clarifies. Will doesn’t remember a sniper named Wilson, so he shrugs. 

“Your memory really has gone to shit.” Tom comments and Will guesses that some of the contents of his letters to Joe must have been shared. “Rosenthal was steady and calm all the fucking time. Sarge said he was the best sniper he’d ever seen. But when he came back from leave, few weeks before I got stabbed,” Will’s stomach drops to head Tom speak of it so casually, “he was shaking so hard he couldn’t hit anything, could barely hold a gun.” Will has no memory of this. But he doesn’t remember a whole lot about the war to begin with so he isn’t surprised. His memory consists primarily of episodic moments of terror interspersed with the occasional memory of a companionable hour with his comrades.

“I’d always thought he was faking it, y’know? That he just didn’t want to be on the front. I tracked him down though, when I got back, and he’s in an institution now. And Harris shot himself,” Will does remember Harris, short, dark hair, quick with a smile, “Roberts got blown up two days before the war ended,” Tom continues. He doesn’t look sad; he looks like he’s reading from a list. 

“Tom,” Will cuts him off, he’s talking about Greene now. “Tom! Stop.” 

Tom does shut up, but he’s got that look on his face like he’s about to disobey a direct order.

“I came here because I can’t avoid the war and I can’t avoid you either. I tried,” he finally admits. He’s gotten to something resembling the truth. No matter how circuitously. 

“I’m can’t fix that.” Tom says plainly. The confusion he’s feeling must show on his face because Tom continues, “You know my hands shake now too. Like Rosenthal. That’s why I looked him up. Doctors say there’s nothing wrong with me. They just shake. My hands didn’t shake while I was in France. Not while I was shooting or repairing wire or walking through no-man’s land. Now they shake when I make tea or brush the horses.” He pauses to take a sip of tea and Will sees no tremor in the limb. “I can’t help you escape France. I’m not sure we ever left.”

With that Tom stands and Will sits in stunned silence as Tom clears the table. “I certainly can’t help you with your wife either,” he throws over his shoulder as he carries the dishes to the tiny kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: graphic, if completely unrealistic, description of a wound
> 
> On that note, I realize that the wound description is unrealistic. Nightmare logic applies to this wound, rather than actual logic. 
> 
> This fic is turning out quite different from my initial draft, so anything that I currently have written for it will have to undergo some heavy editing before it can be published. Expect slow updates. 
> 
> Comments and kudos give me life!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should be working on my thesis because its due in less than three days but instead I finished the next chapter of this fic, because I've lost control of my life. I hope you like this! Full disclaimer there are probably mistakes here because I am very sleep deprived and hate editing right now.

They head to Mrs. Blake’s after Tom has finished clearing up. Tom makes up some excuse about wanting to help his mom around the gardens and with the horses. Will welcomes the distraction of walking over to Tom’s childhood home. Tom smokes in stony silence until they reach the edge of town. He livens then, pointing out different sights, a tree he climbed when he was young, only to fall and break his arm. A property belonging to an annoying old widower and his reclusive son.

By the time they’ve reached Mrs. Blake’s, Tom seems to be in good spirits. He announces their arrival by shouting through the door. Mrs. Blake comes bustling out of the kitchen and beams at them both. Pulling Tom in for a hug and kiss on the cheek. She gives Will the same treatment. He submits to it without complaint.

She takes them along to the sitting room, offering tea, which Tom rejects, offering excuses that he wants to get work done before lunch. Mrs. Blake gives him a critical look but doesn’t comment as Tom begins to edge out of the room. Will goes to follow, at a loss for what else to do, when Mrs. Blake calls to him, “Will, why don’t you help me in the kitchen?” she offers.

Will is frankly a rubbish cook but he has no idea how to turn this woman down, so he follows her reluctantly into the kitchen. 

“He alright?” she asks after explaining how she wanted the vegetables cut, “Tom, I mean?” 

Will shrugs. He’s not really sure how Tom is, if he’s being completely honest.

“We talked this morning,” he offers by way of answer.

She appraises him for a long moment and he tries not to fidget. He focuses on chopping, refusing to shrink from her gaze.

“Will, my sons speak of you often but I hardly know anything about you. You have a family, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. My wife Sarah and two daughters, Anna and Elise.” 

Mrs. Blake hums as she listens, absorbed in preparing a pie filling.

“And your job? Won’t you be missed?” she asks.

“I’ve been given a small leave.” He does not feel the need to elaborate that he works for his father-in-law, who is convinced Will is about to crack at any moment. 

She rounds on him with sudden energy. “Will, I am indebted to you for bringing my sons back to me and I am grateful that you have returned to your family too. All children should grow up with their fathers.”

Will feels the heat of shame rising through his belly. He is well aware that he should be home, with Sarah and his daughters, rather than here with Tom, dragging the war up again. He should just be able to burry it already, or failing that, he should be able to burry himself. 

He looks up at her, and holds her stare.

“I understand you may feel a duty to be here. But you have a duty to that family, Will,” she tells him firmly.

“I do not neglect them,” he protests, feeling caught out by this woman, a complete stranger except for her connection to Tom.

“As you did not neglect my son?” her voice is sharp. The question leaves him feeling exposed. He has no answer for her, so he goes back to chopping. He can not explain to her that if he were not here, he might be in the ground instead.

Mrs. Blake sighs and returns to her cooking. 

When Tom returns, Will is sitting at the small kitchen table as Mrs. Blake works. They’ve been making small talk about the property the Blakes own, their animals, their crops, their farm hands. The earlier tension still floats about but its muted by his polite refusal to talk about it further.

“C’mon, I’ll show you the property,” Blake offers, smiling, belligerently ignoring the tension.

Will looks towards Mrs. Blake, fearing that they will disturb her lunch plans with the jaunt around the farm. She merely nods. “Try to be back in 30 minutes.”

Tom grins at her and looks down at his watch. With a jolt Will recognizes it as the same one he wore at the front. The metal is rough and worn, though the strap is clean and supple. He watches Tom’s hands as they walk outside. They’re wide and rough, stained with dirt. He still wears his rings. Will is struck by an insatiable urge to know everything about this man, who he watched die once. To memorize the patters on his rings, the shapes of his fingernails, the scars on his knuckles.

“What’s the story of your rings?” he asks as Tom walks them over to the barn. 

“Oh,” Tom looks down at his fingers, seemingly surprised to find his own fingers there. “This one was my dad’s. He thought it would make him look like a proper gentleman, if he had a signet ring.”

“And the other?” Will prompts.

“My gran gave it to me.” He doesn’t elaborate further, as they’ve reached the barn and Tom starts introducing him to the horses.

Will isn’t used to horses. Sure, he’s been in many a horse drawn carriage but he never spared a moment’s thought to the horses. In the war, he tried not to think of the horses at all. Their screams were more terrible than the cries of men sometimes. Tom always took it hard when a horse died too. The first time Tom had heard a horse squealing in pain, he’d been frantic, desperate to get away from the sound. Will had never considered those horses as animals to be known before this moment. Now watching Tom stroking Alice’s neck gently, murmuring sweetly to her, he considers for the first time the kind of grief Tom must have felt for that first squealing horse. That first horse had fallen in a muddy crater, and had simply been too weak to climb back out.

It strikes him again that he knows this man so deeply but also not at all. He has watched Tom die. He held the man, and watched the color drain from his face, but he still doesn’t know what Tom wished at his deathbed. 

How many men died without a single person to hear their unvoiced wishes. How many died senseless, forgotten, coughing up blood in trenches with a drowned horse? He feels an obligation to carry each of them inside himself. He knows if he did he would choke.

He cannot give voice to the swell of emotion he’s felt so he reaches for one of the horses, Alice Tom provides, instead. 

“Show me how to touch her?” 

Tom rolls his eyes at Will but takes his hand and guides it out to touch the mare’s neck. She’s shockingly warm under his fingers. He can feel the incredible power she holds just by the shifting in her neck. He enjoys the warmth of her body under his palm, and of Tom’s hand against his own. 

Tom smiles at him and lets his hand fall. Will continues to pet the horse for some long moments. 

“I’d like to show you the cherries.” Tom tells him, not looking at Will. He’s stroking Alice’s shoulder.

Will’s throat tightens at the mention but he nods. 

The orchard isn’t especially large or beautiful. There are no flowers or fruit, just foliage and rough bark. Will is grateful. Some days cherries in bloom threaten to bring him to tears. The pale blooms remind him of climbing over those bodies in the river. Of the shattering moments on the shore where he longed to go back into the water and drown like he should have. 

“So,” Tom says, letting the word hang between them.

“Anna would love this.” Will blurts out. Anna is a soft girl, much softer than her sister. Taken up with romantic ideas and the sweetest things in life. She likes to pick flowers when they go out in the country and talks about the pretty ladies she sees in town with their pretty clothes endlessly. She would love the orchard and the horses and the beautiful countryside.

“You should bring them sometime,” Tom tells him. And that’s something Will has never dared to imagine. His family and this man meeting. He feels a bit like to bring them together would be to invite his wife to the battlefield or bring the gore he and Blake are covered in out of his memories and onto Sarah’s favorite carpet.

“Maybe when they have holiday,” is what he manages to croak out in response.

Tom smiles at him easily, as if he had not just floated an absolutely terrible idea that Will is going to torment himself with for weeks.

By the time they make it back to the house, Mrs. Blake is ladling out the soup for them.

They speak about Will’s childhood, his children, his work, and his wife over lunch. Mrs. Blake seems determined to uncover all details about his life. Her inquiries are unfailingly polite but Will feels under attack the whole time they are conversing. She questions him on the details of each of his stories, asking how his wife looked, or what his bosses name is. Her attitude makes his skin prickle with anxiety. She is very unlike Sarah or his own mother, who are both unwilling to push into his silences. Mrs. Blake tolerates no silence. Several times throughout the meal Will sends frantic looks to Tom, who is listening with as much rapt attention as his mother. Tom just shrugs in response, as if to say what can I do? 

She is effusive in her praise and thanks when they are leaving. She touches his arm, his cheek, his shoulder. She hugs him. The sustained contact burns. He tries to be as polite as possible, not allowing her to witness any of his discomfort. 

Once they are out of earshot of the house, he asks “Is she always like that?” 

“She got pushier after our dad died. But she’s always been,” he pauses, “overbearing.”

Will doesn’t comment on the tactful choice of words. 

“You could have warned me,” Will says.

“What? And miss out on watching you squirm?” Tom fires back.

Tom got like this in the war sometimes. He was always cheeky, but sometimes his words would be exceptionally biting, he would push people away, become easily frustrated with the lack of food, the mud, the stress. The memory of Tom’s belligerent moods comes floating back to him now, through the haze of war memories.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Tom tells him after they’ve walked in silence for some long moments.

“Hm?”

“You would have thought too much, made yourself tense. She’s always like that and there’s nothing you can do about it. Better not to go in anxious.”

Will’s not sure he agrees really, but he can see the logic. He does not press Tom on his reasoning. 

Tom leaves him after lunch, as he needs to help out with some repairs around his neighbor’s house. Will doesn’t ask how he’s able to perform repairs with a cane and continuing pain from his injury.

Will wanders over to Joe’s, where he is greeted by Joe and Artie and another young boy at the door. Artie and the boy are flushed with excitement but Joe looks tired. 

Joe tells him that Artie is having a play date. He doesn’t say that he’s completely overwhelmed but Will can read between the lines. Betty’s out for the day and there’s a quiet strain in Joe’s voice that might be pain or exhaustion or something else. 

“Go sit down,” he tells Joe, “I’ll take care of them.”

“You sure?” he asks. But Will is already squatting down to talk to Artie and introduce himself to the other young boy, Jack he learns. He waves Joe off, who only goes after a long moment of hesitation. 

The boys tell him they’ve been playing cops and robbers. Will listens carefully, nodding when appropriate and prompting them as needed. They are delighted to share. They take him out back and show him the good places to hide. They recreate the scenes of their greatest shootouts. He finds somehow, that he relaxes into the role of father easily. Maybe because the boys are younger than his daughters, and only need his careful attention to their fantasies rather than to their increasingly complicated emotions. Maybe it’s because these are not his children and he does not have to worry that he will ruin them in the long run, the way he’s certain he already has done to his daughters.

Eventually, the boys tire of him and wander off to play out of sight on a lawn after a stern reminder to come home when the clock strikes 5. Will wanders back inside to sit with Joe.

“Thank you for that,” Joe says earnestly.

Will shrugs. He actually really enjoyed looking after them. 

“You’re good with them. Far better than I am sometimes.”

Will isn’t so sure about that.

“Is Tom alright?” he asks instead of acknowledging Joe’s compliment.

“Tom? Seems fine enough to me. He’s been doing better recently. Why? Has something happened?”

Will shrugs. “This morning he was talking about shaking and then he started telling me about all the men from our unit who died. He’s been strange all day.”

Joe winces. “He was obsessed for a while, with trying to find out what had happened to everyone. Sent letters to everyone he could. He hardly ever got good news.”

They sit in silence for a moment as Will digests this.

“I don’t know why he needed to know. Someone told me that the 2nd Devons are all dead now. Died honorably,” his lip curls a little here, “That’s all I needed to know, but he had to know all the details.”

Will can’t imagine. He doesn’t want to know what happened to all his comrades. He touched enough dead for a lifetime. He didn’t need to pile anymore death into his memory. He already felt clogged with it, rotting flesh and pus. That’s all he had left. 

“He needs to prove himself sometimes,” Joe admits after a while.

“Hm?” Will responds, half lost in thought.

“He needs to prove to everybody how much pain he’s in, I think. Or he needs to collect the suffering. He did it when we were little too, after our dad died. Mom didn’t let us talk about it, I think because it hurt too much, but needed to talk about it. He talked about it all the time, to everyone. He never really thought they were taking him seriously, and they didn’t because he talked about it so much. So, he started reading about it, stories with death in them, orphan kids. He spent time with the other kids who’d lost parents in the neighborhood. He needed to know them, know about their parents. It helped, I think.”

“Did it help you?” Will asks, curious.

Joe holds eye contact, “No, I don’t really think it did.” Then he shrugs, “But at least Tom knew he wasn’t the only one hurting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated. Also please send good thoughts as I panic my way through my last few days of grad school!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Tom finally have that conversation they've been avoiding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not die! Since the last chapter was published I have completed my thesis and graduated with three degrees! Also I can't believe I finally finished this!

The thing is, Will’s not really sure he believes Joe. Tom had never been a man to whine about extra work or complain more than others about lice or mud or pain. He complained, to be sure, but not the way some men did. He never made his pain something so large that everyone else had to feel it too. Tom wasn’t like that. He was bewildered, naïve, often expected things to be easier, simpler, and kinder than they actually were. But he wasn’t a victim. 

Will thinks these things while watching Joe struggle to move around the house. He’s still getting used to the prosthetic he says. He says the pain has been bad today, that it’s made him short with his wife, short with Artie. He thinks out of the three of them, Tom, Joe and himself, Joe might be the best at actually sharing his pain. 

They spend the evening discussing less dire topics. They talk about the town, Artie, Betty and her friends, the jobs Joe has looked into and not gotten. Joe doesn’t complain about the pain to Will, but he doesn’t bother to hide it either, wincing at he stands, sitting heavily, asking for Will to get him another drink when he doesn’t want to stand. 

Betty gets home before Artie and Will feels immediately out of place. 

Betty is radiant, her bobbed hair disorderly after a day’s work, her cheeks flushed from the walk home. She’s charming and her kindness makes him long for his wife and the days when comfort between them was still easy. Betty leans over to where Joe is sitting on the armchair and kisses him easily, with the thoughtless intimacy that Will himself cannot manage since the war. 

It’s this thought that makes him feel stiff and awkward in Joe’s home. He doesn’t belong with these people anymore, in this domestic scene. He quickly takes his leave, turning down Betty’s invitation for dinner and Joe’s protest, telling them a half-truth about having plans with Tom. 

Tom opens to his knocking, a pretty flush on his cheeks and a smile on his lips. He rushes away from Will, to the stovetop where something is cooking. He’s humming to himself and dancing a little as he cooks. Will still feels the lingering sense of wrongness that’s been simmering in him since watching Betty and he’s waiting to feel discomfort with Tom’s domesticity. It doesn’t come. Instead, Will is taken by the way Tom looks wearing a well-used apron to protect his shirt. His forearms are bare and Will admires the elegance in his wrist. He admires the sweat beading on his forehead. His hands, his fingers, which have so often appeared in his dreams covered in blood, now holding a spoon, or a kitchen knife. He wants to touch Tom.

Tom saves him from his longing by pulling plates down from a cabinet and serving them both dinner. 

The tension from the morning has dissipated completely it seems. Tom is loose and happy for the whole evening. He leans back in his chair and laughs with his whole body when Will tells a joke. He grins and tells Will the story of how he and his brother got kicked out of the baker’s when they were young, after nicking a few cookies. 

They don’t clean up after themselves that evening. Instead, moving to more comfortable chairs and opening a bottle of spirits and smoking. They are reminiscing. It’s a dangerous thing. Tom is retelling stories he’d heard from other soldiers. There’s the one where Richards stole a goose but almost got shot for his trouble, or the time Solomons had organized a play to try and raise everyone’s spirits. Solomons had provided a sheet he’d taken from an abandon home which someone had fashioned into a dress. Janson had worn it and sang for them in a terrible falsetto that had the lot of them howling with laughter even if the play was appallingly bad. Tom knew the story of how Solomons sourced the sheet, which Will had never heard, and that nearly had Will howling himself. 

It’s late when they fall into happy silence. Tom is flushed with liquor and laughter. The light is low and Tom’s hair is shining with it. Something drops in Will’s stomach as he watches Tom in repose, and he feels suddenly frantic with it, overwhelmed with a need to move, though towards what goal he’s not sure. Tom turns to him and smiles and it’s gorgeous in a way the war had always masked. There’s no underlying tension now, just Tom smiling, looking young and soft. 

Will stands and crosses the space between them quickly but once he’s standing in front of Tom, he’s at a loss of what to do. Tom looks up at him, expression open, lips slightly parted.

They are stuck like that for a moment, looking at each other. Then Tom reaches for his hand, uses it to pull himself to his feet with a slight grunt. Once they are face to face Tom wastes no time reaching for his neck and pulling him down, pressing a gentle kiss against his lips. 

Will knows he’s not responding right, frozen under Tom’s lips, thinking of his wife and the way her lips feel against his own. Then he takes in Tom’s darting eyes and the bob of his Adam’s apple. He sways forward and kisses Tom again, needing to reassure Tom. 

Tom gasps quietly against his lips and Will presses closer. Tom unspools against him, tension dropping away from his shoulder. They pull apart and Tom makes another small noise. That sound tugs at something in Will’s stomach and he has to kiss him. He has to. 

The next kiss is harder, tinged with a desperation that Will has been carrying in himself since the war, since he had to leave Tom bleeding out in the French countryside. 

Tom breaks away eventually and starts tugging him towards the bedroom. Will knows he should refuse. He should break away and go to Joe’s house and leave the next day without a word to Tom and go back to his family. But Tom is hot against him, and Will needs him like he hasn’t needed anyone in so long. He desperately wants to be close to Tom, to touch and hold and fuck and come. He puts Sarah out of his mind.

Tom presses him down against the mattress. Tom climbs atop him and kisses him slowly.

“You alright?” Tom murmurs against his lips when they break apart. 

Will nods mutely, trying to start another kiss.

“None of that,” Tom tells him, pulling away and looking at Will carefully. The scrutiny makes Will squirm.

Whatever he finds there must placate him because he leans down again and kisses him, before nipping at his lip and Will moans, feeling a jolt of arousal and a spark of warmth through his chest. Tom still remembers this of him, how much he enjoys teasing bites. Will remembers the first times they’d kissed on the front. They’d been fumbling at each other’s clothes and Tom had leaned forward and kissed him. Will had been prepared to break away and tell Tom to knock it off. Fumbling and pawing at each other in the dark was one thing but kisses… But then Tom had bit his lip and closed a fist around his prick and Will hadn’t much cared about propriety. 

Will runs his hands under Tom’s shirt, tugging it up and off. He needs to feel Tom’s skin He runs his fingers over the tiny scar from his stab wound. With sudden clarity he remembers Tom’s face when he had been stabbed, the stunned look and how desperately Will had needed to drag him to the aid station. 

Before he can make either of them melancholy, he turns his attention to the rest of Tom’s exposed skin. He rubs a hand up his chest; Tom’s alive. 

“Will?” Tom asks, perhaps concerned at his inaction as he looks at Tom’s body.

Will shakes his head and pulls Tom back towards him. Will needs to kiss him, he needs to kiss him everywhere. He wants to surround Tom and keep him safe; he wants to worship Tom the same way he’s worshipped his wife, slowly, carefully, with the utmost attention to his pleasure. He rearranges them so he’s on top, but Tom hisses and winces when he leans over him. He withdraws immediately.

“Tom?” 

“Ah, just don’t press too hard here,” he waves a hand at his scar.

“Do you need to be back on top?” Will asks.

“Maybe? Kiss me,” Tom tells him.

Will is careful to hold his weight off of Tom but he does kiss him. On the lips, then on the neck, then lower over his chest, his scar, back up to his nipples. 

Tom bucks and moans.

When he finishes kissing over Tom’s torso he leans back over his body to his lips. They kiss hungrily until Tom pushes him away to climb on top again.

“Sorry, it hurts.”

Will doesn’t mind, he’s happy to be underneath Tom and even happier not to hurt him.

Tom lavishes attention on his neck and works on awkwardly shoving Will’s trousers down with one hand. Will eventually bats his hands away and finishes the job for him. Tom takes the opportunity to pull off his own trousers and pants.

He straddles Will again, naked and still soft in a way that makes Will’s heart swell. Will runs his hands along Tom’s back, along his thighs, which are solid and hairy and so unlike a woman’s. He is so different from a woman and Will should be disgusted. He shouldn’t want this anymore. A quick handjob on the front is one thing, but this is worse, more bewitching, more dangerous. He could ruin them both, here in this bed. Yet he is attracted to Tom’s maleness; his flat chest and wide shoulders and Adam’s apple and the hint of facial hair at the end of the day that he can feel against his face.

Instead of dwelling, Will slides his palms down to grab his ass and Tom makes a tiny surprised sound against his mouth. Will grins and he slides a hand up to tweak a nipple, enjoying the way Tom twitches against him.

Tom starts thrusting against him, rubbing their cocks together. It’s a gorgeous feeling, a delicious slide of their hard lengths.

“Tom, what do you want?” he asks.

“Touch me?” Tom asks and Will takes his length in his hand. He enjoys the weight, the girth, the expression on Tom’s face as he starts to stroke slowly. He tries to remember what Tom likes best, how to make him moan, now that they’re together in place that allows for the luxury of moaning. The angle is terrible and makes his arm ache but the way Tom thrusts against him is worth it. 

He strokes Tom and kisses him for a long few minutes before Tom pulls back.

“I want you inside me,” Will’s stomach drops at the words. Tom’s forwardness isn’t a shock but the request is. Will has hardly let himself imagine something like that, much less with Tom. He knows the way people talk about buggery, especially between men, especially about men who allow themselves to be so debased. But here Tom is above him alive and beautiful and asking Will to be inside him. He finds he longs to be inside Tom too.

“I uh – I don’t know. I’ve never,” it feels unbearable to say it out loud.

Tom throws him a teasing look as he searches through a drawer beside the bed.

“You have children, Will,” Tom reminds him as he settles atop Will again.

Will flinches at the mention of his girls here, as he is about to betray their mother.

“Will, do you want this?” Tom asks softly.

“Please, don’t talk about them. Not here,” he begs. Tom nods looking chagrined.

“You still haven’t answered me,” Tom reminds him.

Will nods, “Yes, yes I want you. I want that.” 

He sounds hoarse and he feels scraped raw with the admission. Tom kisses him softly before pouring oil on his fingers. Will watches in awe as Tom readies himself for Will. He loves the way Tom looks like this, rutting back against his own fingers, smiling down as Will. This is not what Will had imagined. He had imaged the way he usually fucks his wife, above her, setting the pace himself as she clings to him. He never imagined Tom could be so demanding but he thinks of course, of course Tom would want his. 

When he slides down on Will’s cock down to the hilt Will gasps, amazed by Tom and how beautiful he is moving slowly atop Will, amazed by his willingness to this, amazed that Will gets to be here inside this man he loves so dearly.

He clings to Tom, letting the other man set the pace, stunned by the tight grip of Tom’s body.

He comes with Tom’s name on his lips and he thinks it feels like coming home, unreal and full of nearly unbearable pleasure.

When he stops shuddering with aftershocks, he takes Tom’s length into his hand and whispers, “That’s right, Tom. Come for me.” He swallows down the ‘darling’ he wants to tack onto the end.

Tom comes with a gasped sound that Will tucks away to remember when they are apart.

In the aftermath, they kiss slowly and after they have both wiped themselves clean Tom lies next to Will and tucks his head against his shoulder, breathing against his chest. Will runs an idle up and down his back and they sleep like that, tucked together. 

The next morning after a slower more languorous fuck and a lazy breakfast, Will finally manages to say what he’s been choking on since April 1917.

“I want you, Tom.”

Tom raises his eyebrows at Will over the apple he’s been devouring. 

“I – ” 

“Wait, let me finish. I know you can’t make it better. I know we can’t do this. That’s why I didn’t write. I knew how much I wanted you back then and I can’t. I can’t, Tom.”

Tom’s face is crumpled and Will has to look away before he can continue.

“I don’t want to hurt you but I have Sarah and the girls. I can’t.” He can’t bring himself to say it.

“Will, we’ve already been together. You’ve already done it,”

“I don’t want to just fuck you. I –” he’s choking, “Tom, I want what we cannot have. And wanting that only hurts us both.”

“It hurts us when you deny yourself too,” Tom points out quietly.

Will lets out a shaky breath.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I would never ask you to leave her. I know how much you love her,”

“I don’t know how to want her anymore. Any time I touch her I just see death, I look at my daughters and I see those a trench full of boys on their first week all dead from gas. I want her but my want for her disgusts me and I don’t know why. But you don’t. It’s easy with you.”

Tom snorts. “Don’t lie. It’s not fucking easy. With the fucking nightmares and my hands and how I can barely work and how I had to move out of Joe’s place because I was so afraid I would hurt him or Artie. Just don’t – ” he cuts himself with a sardonic laugh.

“I can’t explain it. I just, I want you. I don’t know if I can have you in my life and pretend I don’t.”

“Tell me you don’t see me dead every time you look at me,” Tom demands and Will feels stricken.

“Tell me that you don’t see me bleeding out on the fucking ground every time you look at me or touch my scar, every time we fuck,” he continues and he’s right.

“This isn’t about death. Will you think about death with Sarah, you think of it with me. You want her; you want me. What the fuck is this about?” Tom is getting red with frustration and tense with anger.

“I love you, ok? I love you. I don’t want to be without you,” Will finally blurts out, heart racing.

There’s silence and Will can’t bring himself to look at Tom, instead staring out the window where he catalogues the way the roof tiles on the building across the street fit together.

“Will, I’m not asking you to choose. I just don’t want to be cut off. I want to be in your life however you’ll have me. You just need to decide what you can live with and then fucking live with it.”

Will feels like he’s choking still. He finds his own honesty unbearable but more unbearable is Tom’s silence in the face of his confession.

He stands, prepared to run but Tom stands and reels him in, pulling him against his chest, tucking Will’s head against his shoulder.

“I don’t know I can say it back. But please know, this means more than I can say, us together I mean.”

“Can I kiss you?” Will asks against his shoulder.

Tom nods and Will lets his fingers tangle in the other man’s hair while they kiss.

Will spends two more days with the Blakes. The tension between he and Tom eases a bit. They never quite manage to talk about what Will wants from him again, mostly because Will hasn’t decided what he wants yet. But as they are saying their goodbyes in Tom’s flat Will is sure to whisper promises against Tom’s skin. He will write. He will see Tom again. He will hold Tom and have Tom again. He will find a way to live with this too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this ending doesn't disappoint. For me this fic has been about them reaching this conversation. This is a relationship and a situation where there are no easy answers, and everyone is going to be hurt in some way. Life is sadly like that sometimes. 
> 
> Important note: the title will probably change in the next few weeks. I've never been happy with this title so I'll be casting about for something better.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for your support and enthusiasm as I've written this fic. This fandom is really wonderful and supportive and I've enjoyed spending time with you all.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi to me on tumblr!](https://howevernot.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Comments and kudos give me life!


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